Back to School

It’s the end of an era in Hispanic advertising as Ernest Bromley closes his agency in order to pursue a PhD

By Chris Warren

Photo By Josh Huskin

Even while Ernest Bromley was pursuing his undergraduate and MBA degrees at UTSA in the late 1970s, a different academic distinction enchanted him. “It’s going to sound silly, but I was struck by the beauty of the PhD gowns,” he says. In a few short years, Bromley—one of the pioneers of Hispanic advertising profiled in our July feature, Los Mad Men—will finally don his own doctoral gown.

Two days ago, Bromley told the staff at Bromley Communications that the agency would close its doors later this summer so that Bromley could pursue a doctoral degree in consumer behavior. (Advertising Age broke the news to the ad world July 9 with an interview with Bromley.) Bromley Communications is the heir to Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates, which was founded in 1981 and whose work reaching Hispanic consumers was deemed seminal enough to American advertising to be included in a recently opened exhibit called American Enterprise at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Although Bromley’s agency will soon close, by no means does he see his move into academia—he plans to teach after earning his PhD—as retirement. “The marketing industry hasn’t heard the last of me,” he says. Indeed, Bromley plans to focus his research and dissertation on the changing demographics of America and the implications it has on marketing, consumer behavior and society overall. When Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates was launched, the Hispanic population in America was a little over 6 percent, says Bromley. Now it is approaching 20 percent. “I never imagined I would see a demographic shift as transformative as it has been during my career,” he says. “This country is perhaps the first in history where the founding ethnic population is going to become the minority population.” Understanding and teaching students about the implications of these demographic shifts is what Bromley plans to do for the next 20 to 30 years—which is likely given that the 64-year-old Bromley is an avid cyclist whose father is 95.

Though he’s a proud UTSA alum, Bromley plans to obtain his PhD at what he calls one of America’s “wow” schools, like Harvard or Duke. He’s currently investigating which universities have the best consumer behavior doctoral programs and will visit the top ones to do something he’s done successfully throughout his career: pitch his services. “I intend to visit them and pitch my outline [of study] and the ones that are most receptive are where I will send my application,” he says.

Because most doctoral programs involve a year of classwork, Bromley expects to live outside of Texas for a time starting in the fall of 2016, but he says he plans to return to San Antonio when his studies are complete and looks to land a teaching gig—perhaps at the University of Texas in Austin or UTSA, though he is not worrying much about it right now.

And even though the closing of Bromley Communications is the end of an era, Bromley sees the influence of the agency continuing for a long time. Recently, he was asked what he’s most proud of about his career. It wasn’t a single ad or even the influence he’s exerted on American advertising. “It’s the incredible alumni who have gone through this place,” says Bromley, who notes how many of his former colleagues have gone on to do great things at other agencies and clients. “In my mind, through our alums, we will never close. There are so many disciples out there who carry on the spirit we built and will carry it further.”